Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

"The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens.

U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed.

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

A scary article, I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Just a shining example of the kind of police state government conservatives have to offer.

on the topic of the article, that's a pretty messed up situation you could be in.

"you are an illegal immigrant. why, we don't know and won't say. we just know with our gut that you are, so you are going back to your home country. no, we aren't going to check your birth records, because that's how you'll get us. we aren't sure how you will do it, but rest assured, you aren't going to get away with it. prepare to be deported back to whatever country whose people you resemble and who will accept our word that you were born there."

on the topic of the article, that's a pretty messed up situation you could be in.

"you are an illegal immigrant. why, we don't know and won't say. we just know with our gut that you are, so you are going back to your home country. no, we aren't going to check your birth records, because that's how you'll get us. we aren't sure how you will do it, but rest assured, you aren't going to get away with it. prepare to be deported back to whatever country whose people you resemble and who will accept our word that you were born there."

Which is why I think there is more to the story. How do you decide a homeless guy with a southern accent is Russian? There must be more to the story than that, otherwise you could just say anyone here is illegally, something must have led them in that direction.

on the topic of the article, that's a pretty messed up situation you could be in.

"you are an illegal immigrant. why, we don't know and won't say. we just know with our gut that you are, so you are going back to your home country. no, we aren't going to check your birth records, because that's how you'll get us. we aren't sure how you will do it, but rest assured, you aren't going to get away with it. prepare to be deported back to whatever country whose people you resemble and who will accept our word that you were born there."

Which is why I think there is more to the story. How do you decide a homeless guy with a southern accent is Russian? There must be more to the story than that, otherwise you could just say anyone here is illegally, something must have led them in that direction.

exactly. did they just think he had put on a really good disguise and faked the accent? does not compute. unless they know of a southern-accent russian state we've never heard of, then he doesn't fit the profile.

After he was arrested in Colorado on a minor drug charge, Warziniack told probation officials there wild stories about being shot seven times, stabbed twice and bombed four times as a Russian army colonel in Afghanistan, according to court records. He also insisted that he swam ashore to America from a Soviet submarine.

After he was arrested in Colorado on a minor drug charge, Warziniack told probation officials there wild stories about being shot seven times, stabbed twice and bombed four times as a Russian army colonel in Afghanistan, according to court records. He also insisted that he swam ashore to America from a Soviet submarine.

they do admit they didn't check him out properly, so that's a relief.

Well I guess I should have read the whole article (I got bored and was just looking to see how Bush was responsible).

But this article enforced my beliefs, I am all for deporting crazy people and drug addicts to other countries.